KARACHI: It is almost one month since the Green Line bus service became fully operational. It is very popular with people, too, but many, especially the elderly, complain that most escalators and lifts are out of order or they have been switched off at many of the 22 bus stations making it very difficult for them to use the bus service.

Tabbasum Shabbir eyed the flight of stairs before her at the Hyderi Station before taking a deep breath and attempting them. She would stop and wait after every five or six steps. “I have often asked the men in uniform here to kindly turn on the escalators but I am told that they have deliberately kept them off because turning them on invites children to go up and down on them,” the woman sighed.

“So many times we see children doing the same thing on the escalators in shopping malls but the malls don’t shut off their escalators, or even lifts for that matter. I don’t understand the issue here,” she said.

“I have bad knees. Even women younger than me have bad knees these days. We would really appreciate it if the Green Line bus people would open their hearts to folks like us, too,” she added.

Official says the equipment remained off for three years that caused issues

At the Board Office Station, there is a cemented base with its own cement stairs before you can even reach the escalator. And these cement stairs don’t even have rails on the sides. Here, too, the escalator is off. Hamida Bibi, who comes to see her daughter in this area from Burns Road, says that she has never seen the escalator working in this station. “I’m always informed upon asking that it is out of order. But the bus service is new. The escalators are also new. They have never been used,” she said.

Munnawar Adil, a resident of the area also backed the woman. “I have never seen the escalators at the Board Office Station working,” he added.

It is funny then when one notices a board above a station entrance indicating with which side are the plain stairs and which side is the escalator at all these stations whereas the facility is kept off.

“While facilitating the public through the nice and clean Green Line Bus, which also has separate sitting areas inside it for the disabled, the authorities are not even letting the people with disabilities get on the bus by keeping their escalators and lifts off. Well, they are also on at certain stations, but how can a commuter guess where it is on and where it is off? My left leg is injured but that doesn’t mean that I sit at home though this kind of an attitude says that I should,” said Shahzada Humayun, who said he tried getting on Green Line in the start, but then gave up due to these problems.

When the bus service was starting, it was said about this worrying issue that very soon all escalators and lifts would also start working as the machinery and equipment for these come in from abroad.

When contacted about this problem now, Abdul Aziz, the senior manager of the Sindh Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (SIDCL) told Dawn that the escalators and lifts were installed at the stations some three years ago and they had been gathering dust all this time until the Sindh government brought in the buses.

“That dust and lack of use resulted in the malfunction of many escalators and lifts. But we got most of them working again,” he said.

Stolen parts

“Then another issue crept in. We found parts of some escalators stolen. Someone even got away with stealing entire steps from the escalators. We have got the stolen parts replaced but this is also a problem for us. Meanwhile, we also have certain escalators and lifts which are under repair. We also run checks and do maintenance work on them for which we need to stop the escalators for a bit. So they are not off all the time, they are just switched off for the brief time we are working on them,” he claimed.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2022